McDonald’s

Lobbying and advocacy
The company discloses a list of trade associations of which it is a member. It has however an opportunity to disclose a full list for all jurisdictions in which it operates.

Stakeholder engagement
The company discloses the channels it uses to engage with its stakeholder groups.

Sustainable development strategy
The company reports consistently against all its targets.

Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
The company has a time-bound target to reduce its scope 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, reducing emissions intensity (per metric ton of food and packaging) across its supply chain by 31% by the end of 2030 from a 2015 baseline year. To improve its performance and take further leadership in addressing climate change, it has an opportunity to set a time-bound target for reducing its GHG emissions across all scopes, and bring all targets in line with the 1.5-degree trajectory while regularly reporting progress against these.

Animal welfare
The company discloses a target that addresses animal welfare issues in its supply chain and reports progress against the target.

Plastic use and packaging waste
The company is actively involved in reducing plastic use and transitioning to sustainable packaging. It shares quantitative data on its efforts to reduce plastic use and adopt sustainable packaging.

Soil health and agrobiodiversity
The company discloses activities to improve soil health or agrobiodiversity in its production or sourcing practices.

Responsible marketing
The company discloses that Happy Meal Bundles advertised to children meet the Global Happy Meal Nutrition Criteria and comply with relevant local and regional advertising pledges regarding marketing to children. Additionally, it has a responsible marketing policy tailored to children.

Farmer and fisher livelihoods
The company’s McCafé SIP initiative is designed to engage with its coffee supply chain and invest in coffee growers, their communities, and long-term sustainable practices in South and Central America. This initiative aims to foster collaboration among producers by identifying the specific needs of farming communities and working together with them and local partners to provide appropriate training and tools. The progress of the initiative is gauged through specific metrics, allowing for more targeted investments that support income diversification, food security, and the resilience of farming communities.

Land rights
The company has a commitment to respect ownership and use of land and natural resources and related legitimate tenure rights.

Act ethically
The company discloses a global tax strategy and has a policy prohibiting bribery and corruption. Furthermore, the company includes anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in its contracts with direct business relationships. Additionally, it has a grievance mechanism for stakeholders to raise concerns and complaints regarding bribery and corruption.

Provide and promote decent work
The company has a publicly available policy statement in which it commits to respecting the health and safety of workers for its operations and supply chain. Additionally, it discloses the proportion of its total direct operations workforce for each employee category by race or ethnicity. Furthermore, the company publicly commits to gender equality and women’s empowerment and discloses a target to reach gender parity globally in leadership roles by the end of 2030.

Respect human rights
The company has a publicly available policy statement committing it to respect human rights and describes the process for identifying human rights risks and impacts in its supply chain. Additionally, it discloses the results of its human rights risk assessments and also provides a case study describing how it has acted on a salient human rights risk issue.

Moreover, the company states that it participates in initiatives such as AIM-PROGRESS to focus on responsible sourcing. Further, the company discloses that it provides training on forced and child labour, wages and working hours, and health and safety for suppliers in Brazil in 2019. Additionally, it indicates it has a human rights grievance mechanism accessible to all workers and to all external stakeholders who may be adversely impacted by the company.

Governance and accountability for sustainable development
The company discloses a remuneration policy related to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) but can further link this policy to improvement in nature-related objectives. While stating that the board of directors has the expertise in sustainability, there is an opportunity for the company to disclose whether its highest governance body has specific expertise with respect to the company’s most material sustainability topics including nutrition, climate, water, soil health, social inclusion, ecosystem conversion and biodiversity.

Lobbying and advocacy
The company has an opportunity to disclose a clear and detailed framework for assessing alignment of its trade associations with its sustainability targets. Additionally, it can report any (potential) misalignments between the lobbying activities of its trade associations and its sustainability targets.

Stakeholder engagement
The company has an opportunity to disclose an overview of the issues raised during its stakeholder engagement activities.

Sustainable development strategy
The company states that it has a materiality assessment but could further disclose its process for identifying and prioritising its most relevant sustainability topics and impacts, including the outcome of the process. While the company discloses some sustainability objectives/targets including climate, social inclusion and ecosystem conversion, it has an opportunity to establish group-wide targets for the most material parts of its value chain.

Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
The company has an opportunity to reduce its scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions, as well as to disclose a time-bound target for their reduction. They should also report progress against these targets. Moreover, the company’s scope 1 and 2 emissions targets can be aligned with a 1.5-degree trajectory.

Additionally, it has an opportunity to reduce its scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions and report progress against these targets. Similarly, the company’s scope 3 emissions targets have the potential to be aligned with a 1.5-degree trajectory.

Animal welfare
While the company has a target that addresses animal welfare issues in its supply chain, it has an opportunity to make it applicable to all species, geographies and products.

Antibiotic use and growth promoting substances
While the company discloses its goal to eliminate the use of antibiotics defined by the WHO as Highest Priority Critically Important Antibiotics (HPCIAs), it has an opportunity to disclose targets to phase out the prophylactic use of antibiotics across all species, geographies and products, and report against them.

Ecosystem conversion
The company has an opportunity to disclose activities and time-bound targets to achieve conversion-free supply chains.

Food loss and waste
The company has the chance to disclose its FLW reduction targets and report on the progress made towards these targets. Furthermore, it has an opportunity to align its FLW reduction goals with SDG12.3, which aims for a 50% reduction by 2030.

Soil health and agrobiodiversity
The company has an opportunity to disclose a target to improve soil health in its production or sourcing practices and report progress against it.

Water withdrawal
The company has an opportunity to enhance its disclosures relating to water use and withdrawal.

Accessibility and affordability of nutritious foods
The company has an opportunity to disclose its commitment and commercial activities to improve the accessibility and affordability of nutritious foods.

Availability of nutritious foods
The company has disclosed that in the UK, 92% of its core food and drink menu contains fewer than 500 calories. Additionally, 70% of items in its Happy Meal menu are considered low in fat, salt, and sugar (non-HFSS) according to the U.K. Government’s Nutrient Profiling Model. However, it still has room for improvement in reporting its efforts to reduce sugar, salt, and fat, as well as increase the inclusion of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and whole grains in its global portfolio. The company should consider adopting a nutrient profiling system that aligns with government-endorsed or externally validated nutritional guidelines. Furthermore, it should set a sales-based target to increase the percentage of nutritious products and menus in line with these guidelines.

Clear and transparent labelling
The company has an opportunity to adopt front-of-pack labels or any other consumer- facing nutrition labels that support consumers with making healthier food choices. Additionally, it can disclose the percentage of menus for which its front-of-pack labelling schemes have been rolled out.

Food safety
The company has an opportunity to demonstrate that 100% of its own operations are certified to a GFSI food safety scheme/certification programme or other widely recognised (industry-specific) certification. Additionally, it can disclose the percentage of its food suppliers that are certified to a GFSI-recognized food safety scheme.

Child labour
The company has an opportunity to disclose examples of remediation programmes when a case of child labour is found in its operations. It also requires its suppliers to prohibit child labour and to validate employees’ eligibility to work. However, it has an opportunity to require them to have an age-verification system in place. Moreover, the company has an opportunity to indicate how it is building the capacity of its suppliers to prevent child labour impacts.

Farmer and fisher livelihoods
The company has an opportunity to identify living income benchmarks and assess living income gaps for some commodities and regions. Also, it could adopt procurement practices and develop supply chain relationships that improve farmers’ income resilience.

Forced labour
The company prohibits the charging of recruitment fees to any migrant worker in order to obtain employment. Additionally, when recruiting migrant workers, neither the company nor its subsidiaries require the withholding of any government-issued identification as a condition of employment. However, these commitments should be extended to all workers engaged in the company’s operations. Although the company does not permit its suppliers to retain the personal documents of workers, it has the opportunity to further strengthen its stance by disclosing the prohibition of charging recruitment fees within its supply chain.

Land rights
The company could require its business relationships to have a process to identify legitimate tenure rights holders paying particular attention to vulnerable or marginalised tenure rights holders, and to negotiate with them to provide adequate compensation.

Living wage
The company has an opportunity to set a target for paying a living wage across its direct suppliers and describe how it determines a living wage for the regions where it sources. Also, it could disclose the percentage of workers across its own operations or suppliers that are paid a living wage.

Act ethically
The company could describe the process for identifying its bribery and corruption risks and impacts in specific locations or activities covering its own operations. Furthermore, it has a publicly available policy stating that its employees may participate as individual citizens in the political process, however, this policy is applicable to the US operations only. Thus, the company has an opportunity to have a policy setting out its lobbying and political engagement approach. Additionally, it could disclose a publicly available policy statement that specifies that it does not make political contributions. The company could disclose its expenditures on lobbying activities and could also disclose that it requires third-party lobbyists to comply with its lobbying and political engagement policy.

Provide and promote decent work
The company has an opportunity to disclose how it monitors the health and safety performance of its suppliers. While the company states that it pays minimum wage to its employees, it has an opportunity to commit to paying a living wage by setting a time-bound target. Additionally, it could disclose how it determines a living wage for the regions where it operates and also how it works to support the payment of a living wage by its suppliers. Furthermore, the company currently has 26.67% women on the board and it has an opportunity to disclose that it has at least 30% women and it could also disclose the ratio of the basic salary and remuneration of women to men.

Respect human rights
The company discloses statements committing it to respect the ILO’s fundamental rights at work in its operations and supply chain. However, it has an opportunity to use stronger language to turn the statement into a formal commitment. Additionally, the company could describe a comprehensive process for identifying human rights risks and impacts across all its activities.

Although it states that it engaged with an external provider to conduct a Human Rights Impact Assessment (HRIA) at the farm level to identify the most salient human rights risks in the supply chain and further, discloses its most salient risks, i.e. occupational health and safety, migrant workers and decent working time, it could describe the process for assessing its human rights risks within its own operations. Additionally, the company could disclose a global system to act on, prevent or mitigate its salient human rights issues.